warhammer40kfandomcom-20200222-history
Ruination of Imperfect Beauty
A Ruination of Imperfect Beauty or Ruination (also called the Sensate Daemon Breed of Kinog) is a daemon of the Chaos God Slaanesh, the Prince of Pleasure. It is a corruptor of schemers, artists, and artisans. It builds covens of weak men who seek perfection, and empowers itself by the ruin it works upon their souls. The daemon is a whisper upon the air, a taint upon some few amidst the many. Those who would combat it must force its manifestation by tearing down its coven, or await its final act of ruination brought upon the weak. There, it might be banished by force of blessed weapons and the prayer of the faithful. History Slaanesh sends ripples of raw sensation across the Calixian Empyrean. Strange and obsessive daemon breeds crystallise where those ripples meet the psychic ebb and flow of decadent Pleasure Worlds. One such breed is the Ruination of Imperfect Beauty, named by savants of the Schola Impermissus before their final purge at the hands of the Inquisition's Ordos Calixis. A Ruination of Imperfect Beauty arose upon the Pleasure World of Kinog in the early 8th century of the 41st Millennium. The sinful of Kinog consorted in illicit pleasure, in the creation of extravagant art, and in ornate conspiracies -- it was a pale and sordid reflection of corrupt Malfi, composed at the surface as a floral garden within which courtly love might bloom. Thorough decadence and exacting sin called a Ruination from the Warp to complete the blackening of noble souls. The true form of a Ruination is a bloated, repulsive combination of toad, crab, and corpulent woman, but it rarely manifests itself until its plans reach their conclusion. Even then, it hides behind a delightful, lustful appearance. It is a potent daemon, yet is driven to do no more than quietly build a coven of just six decadents: wastrel artists, lovers, or conspirators. It whispers in their ears, steering their dreams and hopes to the construction of perfect works: the perfect painting, the perfect love, the perfect conspiracy of murder. All of the members and works are interlinked within the coven, and each nearly perfect work is marred by one deep flaw. The Ruination is pleasured by these undertakings and the human emotions -- frustration, anger, delight -- resulting from them. Perfection is a harsh taskmaster, and the daemon is obsessive in its manipulation and arrangement of lives. In the end, however, when the pattern has run its course, the Ruination must draw its coven together and manifest to destroy it, so as to feed upon their souls and empower itself. A Ruination has power to lay waste in the Archenemy's unholy name and drive men insane with a glance -- but instead, its mad daemonic nature compels it to cajole, threaten, and bargain as a whisper on the wind. It achieves its aims by manipulative subterfuge and seeps Warp–taint into the spires of wealth almost by accident. Tomes of the Schola Impermissus reveal further secrets of the Ruination breed, scattered between the ramblings of broken minds -- if the tomes can be found at all, that is. For example, a Ruination abhors incompetence with the conviction of a zealot. Obviously poor goods or inept artisans can act as a ward, and credible accusations of imperfection can achieve banishment of the daemon. Sources *''Dark Heresy: Creatures Anathema'' (RPG), pp. 129-130 Category:R Category:Chaos Category:Daemons Category:Calixis Sector